Joseph “Joe” Biden had won the US elections with a staggering 75 million votes. Not since Barack Obama, who won with a little over 66 million votes, did a US president enjoy such an overwhelming popular support.
In 2016, Donald Trump garnered only 62.9 million, thereabouts. In fact, Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in the electoral college, had clocked in a little over 65 million popular votes.
I was stumping my half-smoked Purple Mints in a wooden ashtray when I got wind of the Biden victory over CNN. After patiently waiting for the result of the elections for the past four days, I was naturally thrilled. No, make it ecstatic.
Trump losing in the elections, for me, is a cause for celebration. Expect a bit of schadenfreude stuck between the iced bourbon and the barbeque the following night.
There’s something sweetly spellbinding, no, fascinating, when I see a tyrant fall. It made me think that humanity, or at least Americans, had not lost their way as badly as when I first thought they did.
Biden’s win was so captivating, so ultimately entrancing that perhaps we Filipinos can achieve something like it come presidential elections in 2022.
I don’t see anything explicitly wrong with hoping. After 27,000 murdered in Duterte’s bogus drug war according to Amnesty International, after such a sloppy handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, after all the corruption, impunity and the inanities and profanities displayed and hurled, respectively, by President Rodrigo Duterte, I mean, who would want him to stick around? Only a fool—and a well-paid troll—would be ridiculous enough to want him to overstay his welcome.
And so there I was, fully charged with the hope of seeing my own people turn the tide of tyranny around come election year. Perhaps elect Vice President Leni Robredo as president. Or better yet, get someone totally new in the political arena. Young, able and willing. Intelligent, not the least.
After Biden’s win, social media was abuzz about the 2022 elections and how, perhaps, we can win the day by refusing to vote for a Marcos or a Duterte—their minions included.
Anyone other than a Duterte and a Marcos would do. We don’t even have to settle with voting into the Executive branch the “lesser evil”. Evil is evil in whatever shape or form. Exclamation point.
But then it hit me: will a change in leadership really solve anything?
Our nation’s problems are nowhere near negligible. The past four years under Duterte had been brutal. An economy limping in the knees, marked by staggering unemployment figures and exacerbated by Nature’s fury, beginning with volcanic eruption in Taal, earthquakes in Mindanao, a couple of super typhoons which had recently crossed the Bicol region, and a pandemic.
The death toll in Duterte’s bogus drug war has probably breached 30,000 by now or more, what with Amnesty International’s initial tally of 27,000 three years into Duterte’s term. The killings are still being carried out even as the pandemic wreaks havoc in our shores.
Impunity has allowed the likes of Imelda Marcos, who was charged with seven counts of graft by the Sandiganbayan’s Fifth Division two years ago, to evade a jail term. This includes big name bosses of drug syndicates.
In 2017, 2018 and 2019, Duterte had repeatedly admitted that he cannot stop, much less control, the proliferation of illegal substances, leaving his campaign promise of three-to-six months down in the dumps.
And this despite orders from the President for members of the police force to kill anyone linked to drug trafficking. In a PDP-Laban rally in Malabon City in 2019, GMA News Online reported Duterte as saying, “I cannot control drugs. Son of a b—-, I already had them killed. Drugs are still here. All it did was proliferate more.”
Yesterday morning, I woke up to news of Maj. Gen. Debold Sinas being promoted as Philippine National Police Chief. I thought is was some sick joke, knowing that the PNP, in January this year, had insisted on refusing promotions to any overweight police officer.
Netizens were quick to remind the public of Gen. Sinas’ stint as police chief in the Visayas: “Maj. Gen. Debold Sinas may be remembered as the official who misguidedly held a ‘mañanita’ during a raging pandemic. But it’s his bloody stint as chief in Central Visayas, where hundreds were killed with impunity, that truly casts a pall on his appointment as new PNP chief.”
One other Twitter user wrote, “Debold Sinas is the symbol of the government’s double standards and intoxication with power. For Duterte to elevate Sinas as PNP chief instead of punishing him speaks of his shameless hypocrisy and total lack of respect for the Filipino people.”
One social media post raised the issue of Sinas’ participation in the trumped-up charges leveled against activist Reina Mae Nasino: “I know we all remember Sinas for the whole mañanita thing. But more diabolically, he also led the violent communist crackdown in Negros, was the top cop in Cebu during the height of its EJK cases, and saw the arrest of Reina Mae Nasino over trumped up charges. Our new PNP chief.”
Sinas’ stint in the Visayas will surely go down in history as the most violent and the bloodiest, with a little over 300 extrajudicial killings and close to 150 casualties involving police operations.
Problem is, the PNP seems to have a standing order not to release any document or evidence associated with the drug war, leaving independent investigators in the dark as to how to make sense of it all.
Rappler reported, “The promised opening of police reports, or even at least spot reports, never materialized despite numerous letters of request. […] The lack of information-sharing and access to important documents proved to be a challenge. It’s like ‘looking for a needle in a haystack’ […] CHR’s (Commission on Human Rights’) special investigators sometimes have to employ their own techniques in probing. In some cases, they resort to just taking photos of documents they need after negotiating with the police.”
Many people fear that impunity will only get worse under the leadership of Gen. Sinas.
Speaking of leadership, let’s backtrack a bit and ask the question again: Will a change in leadership really solve anything?
I believe it will. I believe that good leadership counts for something. I likewise believe that if in 2022 someone other than a Duterte or Marcos or any of their minions wins the elections, if that same person possesses good leadership potential, changes will happen.
These changes may not be grand, or even swift, but it would be highly likely that we will see some stark transformations in how government is run. No more profanities, no more stoking the fires of hate, misogyny, inanity. At the very least, we will have a leader who is neither incoherent nor unprepared to face to challenges of the times.
Who knows? With a brand new President, impunity might be a thing of the past.
Perhaps some of the more appalling problems will remain after the new President’s full term, like debilitating poverty, cold-hearted capitalism and plutocracy, hunger, even corruption in high places. But they will not be as incapacitating—and exasperating—as when Duterte sat as President.
Because in leadership, good people matter. In fact, more than good, the right people matter. If Filipinos will only get their act together and find the right person for the job, then perhaps hope would not be as unsteady or life as grim as when Duterte ruled with a dirty mouth.
Change we must want for change to come.
Joel Pablo Salud is an editor, journalist and the author of several books of fiction and political nonfiction. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of LiCAS.news.
